The Meaning of “Ideal-Distance” in Fujimoto’s Vision of Jikyū

Abstract

This paper focuses on the idea of jikyū (subsistence) that was combined with counter-ideas against the negative effects of modernity. In Japan, there have been many jikyū ideologies and social movements because of the frequent occurrence of issues concerning food safety, health deterioration, and community degradation after the 1970s. Jikyū has been expected to improve these defects, and to reconstruct a new social relation. In proceeding studies, many cases have been described in detail. On the other hand, few theoretical studies have been conducted. Consequently, chronological changes and relative distinctions on jikyū ideologies have not been clarified. This study aims to investigate the character of this thought with the “Ideal-Distance” notion, which connotes the distinction between ideal and practical figures on subsistence. Toshio Fujimoto was a thinker and activist who adhered to the jikyū principle. It is considered that his thought could be understood in four life-course stages. The first stage was after he committed to the student movement in the last part of the 1960s. He had not yet drawn attention to agriculture and subsistence, but in his dissertation, we can find much criticism against modernity. The second was when he engaged in organic distribution between the years 1974 and 1983. He had contributed to developing one of the famous distributors, but he definitely encountered difficulties in maturing his vision. The third period started in 1983. He retired from the company and established a new farm named Shizen Ōkoku in Kamogawa City, Chiba Prefecture, where he attempted to work out jikyū concepts by adopting subsistence methods. Through this agrarian movement and some failures, Fujimoto moved from the practical approach into the conceptual approach. Eventually, new rural life styles were invented in this period. The final stage was after the 1990s. He realized the meaning of the distinction between idea and practice around jikyū and renamed it jikyū gokko. It meant his discovery that strict subsistence was not suitable enough for a self-governing movement as jikyū. That was the “ideal-distance.”